


Family, Found and Fated

by Assassin_J



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Computerized Clay, Digital Desmond, Gen, Modern Assassins (Assassin's Creed), Trans Girl Elijah, handwavy technobabble
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24760144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Assassin_J/pseuds/Assassin_J
Summary: Being digital kind of sucked ass, Desmond decided.(previous title: "Family, Found and Un-Found")
Relationships: Arend/Harlan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

It was a normal, everyday type of day at the Assassin Hideaway. Birds were chirping, chickens were clucking, and distant footfalls indicated the early-morning runners.

"I miss Dad," said Ellie as she poked at her waffles.

"He's only going to be out a couple hours at most," said Arend.

Ellie looked up, her uneven eyes big and plaintive. "I mean biological Dad."

Arend deflated at the mention of Desmond. "But you never even knew him," he said after a moment.

"So I miss him all the more." Ellie stabbed a piece of waffle vengefully with her fork. "And I miss Mom too. Fuck the Templars for taking her from me."

"Yeah, fuck them," Arend agreed. He didn't see the point in policing the kid's language. Ellie had been through so much in her short life, and sometimes profanity was the best way to express how it all made her feel. And it wasn't like "Fuck the Templars" was a controversial opinion around these parts, anyway.

Ellie chewed her waffle. Silently yet loud, Aita spoke up within her mind, haughtily disdaining the plebian breakfast. Also silently, but not as loud, Ellie told him to shut up.

Obviously unaware of all that, Arend combed a hand through his hair, wondering if he should say something to follow up on Ellie's missing her parents.

"Can we go visit Charlotte today?" Ellie asked, looking up again.

Arend smiled, glad to be on an easier topic. "Sure, of course. You know she loves hanging out with you." He got up and patted Ellie's shoulder.

* * *

Being digital kind of sucked ass, Desmond decided. Yeah sure, he was "alive", in a sense, but it lacked the pizzazz of being, you know, fleshly alive. "The Grey" was an apt name; nothing had texture or vibrancy here, it all sort of blended into a fuzzy fog. Yes, he could browse himself to observe pictures and video and whatnot, but it wasn't the same. The files didn't seem... real enough. Even porn didn't arouse his senses.

"You got that too?" Clay had asked. "Thought that was just my depression."

"Well maybe I'm depressed too," Desmond had responded back. "I mean I am fuckin' **dead**."

"Or maybe boners just don't exist here. Makes an unfortunate amount of sense, right? Digitized brains, without the rest of the body."

"It's not just boners it's.... it's everything, Clay." Everything was muted, dulled, diluted. A pale, bloodless imitation of life.

A tiny-font "Yeah" had been Clay's only response.

At least by this time Desmond knew who he was.

For several years after 2012, he had been just a jumbled semi-consciousness, floating along whichever way the currents of uploads and downloads took him: meme boards, alt-right forums, IRC sex chats, cryptocurrency exchanges, weird parts of Youtube, kid-friendly game sites, music fileshare programs, etc, etc, etc....

A dark web conspiracy chatroom had been the first part of his awakening. The words "Knights Templar" had seemed really really pertinent for some reason.

Within a year from that, he'd become "Desmond" again. Clay had helped him along. And Juno had hindered.

Yup, Juno was there too. At least, Clay and Desmond assumed this strong digital entity was Juno. It, or rather she, seemed to be a bit muddled, like Clay and Desmond had been when they were new to the Grey. But she was definitely powerful. At times she lashed out and took offline the entirety of vast sites like Gaia Online or Twitter or Bank of America, and they didn't know if she did it purposefully or just by accident. She didn't talk to them, and they didn't talk to her, as Clay thought conversation would make her more lucid - more of a threat.

Clay and Desmond kept to themselves mostly, in dark corners of abandoned sites, unused Discord servers, etc.

Being digital was lonely. Yeah, Clay was there, but Clay wasn't always in the mood to talk.

From time to time, Desmond thought about seeking out the Assassins. It wouldn't be easy, as the Brotherhood had their own network protocol unconnected to HTTP or HTTPS. And they would have to make extra-sure that Juno didn't follow them in to wreak havoc.

"You still thinking about that?" came a message from Clay's consciousness.

Desmond had been freaked out the first time Clay "read his mind" like this. The border between one mind and the other wasn't always solid in this place. He had seen into Clay's mind too from time to time. Hella weird.

"Yeah," Desmond messaged back. Conversing in the Grey was weird as well. It wasn't like talking, and it wasn't like texting. Desmond didn't know how best to describe it. Clay had called it "a MUSH-like semi-controlled Vulcan mind meld" once.

"Well I found something," Clay sent. Then he sent over the details of that "something". The packet was encrypted with a countdown timer, barely 40 seconds left. "Read it quick," Clay added, "it'll self-delete at the end of countdown."

Desmond scanned the packet. It contained a link with a strange format he'd never seen before. "Where'd you find this?"

"If you wanna do it, we have to move fast, before he disconnects," Clay sent.

In the Grey, where you didn't have a face, you couldn't exactly shoot someone a surprised look, but Desmond did his darndest to shoot one at Clay, and the intention got across in his "brainwaves" or whatever the best term might be.

"Let's fuckin go then," Clay said, and his brainwaves were like a huge eager smile.

* * *

The screen of Harlan's smartwatch flashed dimly as he made the touchless payment. He stared at it a second, then put it out of his mind and moved to bag up the groceries.


	2. Chapter 2

"Whre tf are we?" Desmond asked. "Feel crmped." It seemed to have become very hard to communicate as soon as they made the transfer. And wherever they were, it seemed tiny as fuck; the digital equivalent of two people crammed back-to-back in a very small closet.

"Smrtwch," Clay answered, the word tinny and clipped, barely understandable.

Well that would explain it. "Smrtwch, rly, Cly? 2 hman mnds cn't fit in-"

"We'r compresd. Lke zip fil."

"Is tht wy our com-"

"Ys, I-"

"Dud, ths sux!"

"Fk, I kno, fk, jus hng on- I tryn to- jus hol on 4 a bit!" Clay was grappling with several different processes at the moment. Heart rate monitor, nah they didn't need that; cache, let's empty that out; GPS, oh let's take a look. "IIRC th locaton of HQ, we'r clos to it! & gettn closr now!" he said, and the words came out in a high-energy purple.

"Wy r u prpl an I'm grn?" Desmond questioned.

"Sht up, dn't u lik grn? Im wrkin here." Clay shooed Desmond away, as much as he could in the cramped digital space. "Gtta wtch the ntwrk actvty so we can gt out."

Desmond backed off. 

* * *

Harlan shouldered open the door to their house and headed to the kitchen. "Anyone here? I could use help with puttin' away groceries," he called.

There was no response.

"Fine, fine, I'll put them away myself, but you're making dinner tonight Arie!"

After five minutes of putting milk gallons in the fridge, soup cartons in the pantry, pizzas in the freezer, etc., Harlan realized he was alone in the house. It was his Eagle Sense pinging that told him this.

The sense would kick on spontaneously, never of Harlan's own will, and never for more than a second or two. It was damn annoying sometimes, the uncontrollable-ness of it. But at least it was useful when it did activate: a mini-radar radius around him that alerted his mind to allies, threats, and points of interest.

And this time it told him there were no allies nearby.

"Hm, fine. Guess they went for a walk." Harlan opened up the door and headed down the rough footpath that led into the heart of their "village".

He passed by Emmett, who was under a shady tree, doing a chess game by himself. Harlan called out to him, "Howdy. You seen Arend and Ellie?"

"They headed over to visit Charlotte," Emmett drawled, moving one of his knights.

"Awesome, thanks!" Harlan patted Emmett's shoulder in appreciation before walking away.

* * *

"W're close," Clay said. "Th srvr, Asasn srvr-"

"Asasn srvr!" Desmond sent in loud lime green, bouncing off the circuit board walls with excited energy.

"Fck, clm dn," Clay told him. He was excited as well, but he was more level-headed about it.

"I'l clm dn whn I'm ded," Desmond retorted. This was a bit of an inside joke between the two dead men.

"I ned to cncntrt," Clay hissed, slapping Desmond's unruly data-body.

Resignedly, Desmond metaphorically sank into a far corner, arms metaphorically crossed. He watched Clay monitoring the input scrolling around him, the busy digits of binary code and IP addresses, the flash of electric impulses nearly merging with his own computerized thought. From time to time Clay swiped through the datastream to hone in on something specific.

"Ths gnna tke mch lnger?" Desmond asked.

"Gtta find a drve tht'll hold us," Clay said, keeping close watch on the pingbacks of nearby devices. "Not tht, not tht, not tht... aha! Yes! Prfct!" He metaphorically grabbed onto one of the many connections. "Des! C'mon!" he sent shrillly, pulling Desmond's data closer.

Desmond felt himself folded into a packet under Clay's supervision. It was a hell of an experience, even though he'd already done this before in their transfer to the smartwatch. Compression, encryption, bit-by-bit transmission. His consciousness, his very being, was stretched out across the wireless space between the smartwatch and his destination.

He looked ahead toward that destination, and received the specs of it as pieces of himself landed within. SSDs with single-level cells, SATA III, eight-core CPU, a whopping sixty terabytes storage. This was a hell of a machine. Brandless, of course, the Assassin's didn't just go out and _shop_ for computers, it was pieced together with components made by various different companies, and some homemade too.

Bit by bit, Desmond was unfolded from his packet and written onto the drive. He became aware, slowly, of just how much hardware he was now privy to.

He found the security cameras first, and reached out hesitantly to the closest one. It was pointed at the server itself, a massive gray hulk of a thing in a dimly-lit room. _Well, this is the Assassin headquarters, Clay said. They would have the best of the best stuff._ He felt briefly sad that he'd never gotten to visit HQ during his fleshly life. 

But Desmond shook off that sadness. He was getting to visit it now, at least. He poked out along the wire pathways, reaching to further cameras, picking one at random. It showed a Black man with a graying beard, sitting under the broad shade of a tree, puzzling over a chessboard. The man took a puff from a small joint and moved a black rook to capture a white pawn.

Desmond moved to another camera. This one was indoors, in a sparsely-furnished gym where half-a-dozen people were sparring in pairs. The next camera he tried was also indoors, a hospital-type room with a single bed occupied by a young woman half-covered in bandages. Next to the bed stood a few people, a man, a woman, and a child.

"-much better today," the standing woman, clad in a doctor's coat, was saying. "Grafts are healing very well, and she can lose some of the bandages soon."

The child, a girl with long curly black hair, clapped happily, and the woman in the bed smiled. The child started to speak-

-but the next moment, the lighting in the room turned a gentle red and a calm, but very noticeable recorded voice played out of a speaker. ALERT. COMPUTER SYSTEM INTRUSION DETECTED. ALERT. COMPUTER SYSTEM INTRUSION DETECTED.

Desmond pulled back from the camera, withdrawing all the way. He'd only been in the system about ten seconds total, but the Assassin security was real real good apparently. He noticed the beginning of Clay's download-arrival beside him on the drive, and pushed a message to him quickly: "They've noticed us, we're a 'system intrusion', what do we do?"

More systems came to life around Desmond; he felt the fence around HQ turn electrified, and felt the doors to the weapons locker unlatch, and -most worrying of all- he felt the slow sweep of a virus scanner beginning to search.

"Fuck, fuck, don't delete us!" Desmond called to it. "We're Assassins, we're not viruses or hackers or anything!" He danced around on the drive, looking for something, some way he could overwrite the scan protocol.

He felt several laptops around the sprawl of the den, all hooking in to check the server status. The user ID on each device flashed into his consciousness. 

User ID: EricCoop

User ID: ColMcQ

User ID: MarcRedd

User ID: MyshLem

User ID: WmMiles

"Dad!" he cried out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to maiyosoyomi (in the Infamous Protocreed_Dogs discord server) for tech tips.


	3. Chapter 3

Back in the infirmary, Ellie was looking up at Arend, looking for reassurance.

"It's fine," Arend said, giving her shoulder a little squeeze. "Just a computer thing."

"Are we being hacked?"

"Maybe."

"I trust our tech team can handle it," Dr. Chiu said with a smile. She turned her attention back to Charlotte in the bed. "So, all the grafts are healing up very nicely. I still think you need to continue bedrest, but a lot of the bandages can come off soon."

"Excellent," Charlotte said, smiling.

* * *

William Miles wasn't an easily shocked man. He dealt with injury, death, and world-shattering information quite a bit in his daily life.

Despite all that, he was indeed a bit shocked to see a box pop up on his laptop screen with the text "Dad!"

The box was smack in the middle of the screen, formatted like an error message, complete with an "Ok" button at the bottom. By default muscle memory, William's cursor had already moved over the button, but he held himself back from clicking it. Clicking it might give the intruder more access, unleashing who-knows what kind of chaos.

His phone buzzed and he took a look. It was a text from Eric, saying the virus scanner and the network intrusion detector were already being run. "We'll get this bastard, dinna fash," the text concluded.

A smalle smile formed under William's beard. He was glad to have Eric, My'shell, Colin, and Marco as HQ's tech team. Individually, those four were genius, but together they were nigh-unstoppable. He was certain they could keep the network safe.

William texted Eric back, "Did you get this pop-up too?"

Eric sent: "What pop-up?" and a confused emoji.

"The one that says Dad."

"Haven't got any pop-ups. Careful Bill."

"Yes, I know," William sent, and put his phone down. He reached around to press the power button on the back of his laptop, but just then, something even stranger happened on his screen.

The pop-up box was twitching in place, and the text within it was changing. Where before it had said "Dad!" now it said

It's me, it's Desmond! Please stop the antivirus!

William picked his phone up again and started tapping at a furious pace. "Eric you still aren't seeing this?"

"No pop-ups on my end," Eric confirmed.

"The message claims to be from Desmond," William sent. "Who would do that?"

Seriously Dad! It's me and Clay!

"Now it's mentioning Kaczmarek," William muttered to himself while relaying that info to Eric as well. "What kind of crazy scheme...."

Dad please believe me and TURN OFF THE ANTIVIRUS! I know it's hard to believe, but it's true, our minds were uploaded when our bodies died. You need proof? Ask me anything, something only Desmond would know.

A text field opened up below that latest message, with a cursor blinking, waiting for input.

William dropped his phone beside the keyboard and hovered his hands over the keys, thinking, considering. If this was an intruder in their network, what would that intruder possibly have to gain by this ruse? On the other hand, there was no way it was really Desmond, right? ...Right?

His phone pinged with a message from Eric: "Don't click anything, just leave it to us. The antivirus should get it taken care of soon enough."

William picked up the phone and pressed the button to phone Eric, who picked up within a couple seconds.

The cursor in the text field blinked incessantly.

"Eric is it possible?"

"What?"

"This 'intruder' says they're the neural upload of Desmond and Kaczmarek. Is it possible?" he asked again, insistently. A faint glimmer of hope was lit deep in his mind.

"Neural upload?"

"Do I have to explain th-"

"That's only theoretical, I don't think anyone's ever-"

"The Isu managed it," William cut in.

"Yes, but human technology hasn't-"

"Stop the antivirus; that's an order."

"What the-"

"That's an order, Eric," he repeated. "Stop it now. And only restart it if and when I tell you to." And William began to type.

* * *

After seconds which passed like eons to Desmond, he finally received something back from William's computer:

If you're Desmond, then tell me this: When did you get the scar on your lip?

The question stirred up a whole suitcase of negative emotions, but Desmond had no time for unpacking all that. He sent out an answer immediately: "I was 14. We were practice sparring and you took advantage of an opening I left in my defense."

* * *

William read and re-read the answer.

I was 14. We were practice sparring and you took advantage of an opening I left in my defense.

It was true. He remembered that day well. On Desmond's 14th birthday, the kid had been obnoxious all morning, full of restless energy. The best way to utilize that energy, William had figured, was through physical training.

Both armed with simple daggers, they circled each other for a while, and then Wiliam spotted a foolish opening in Desmond's stance. His neck was fully exposed. William lunged, and Desmond reacted a split-second later by ducking his head down. William's dagger sliced a bloody line across his son's lips as Desmond fell backward with William atop him.

"Rookie mistake," William had grumbled at him. He turned the dagger around and pressed the hilt into Desmond's gut. "You're dead," he spat, and got back to his feet, striding away as the duel's onlookers murmured to each other.

Now, so many years on from the incident, William had mixed feelings about it. Yes, he had needed to teach Desmond a lesson, teach him never to let down his guard in a fight, and the lasting wound surely served as a reminder of that. But perhaps he had gone overboard; perhaps they should have dueled with blunted daggers rather than real ones. Bruises and sore muscles were common in practice sparring, but that duel remained the first and only time he had intentionally spilled his son's blood, and Desmond surely held a grudge for it.

Exactly two years after that duel, Desmond had made his escape from the Farm.

* * *

"Desmond!" Clay shouted in a happy neon pink. "The antivirus was turned off!"

"Thank fuck," Desmond said, metaphorically sinking to the floor. "I guess Dad finally believed me."

"It was deactivated by an Eric Cooper," Clay specified, and reached into a database to pull up that person's file. "You know this guy?"

"No, not that I recall."

"Scottish, born 1979, previously assigned to Gavin's crew aboard the Altaïr II," Clay rattled off from the dossier. "Strengths include navigation, recon, and information technology."

"Whatever, Clay," Desmond sighed. "I don't care if it was deactivated by Juno or Juhani or who the fuck ever. We're safe now."

"And among allies," Clay said, metaphorically sliding the database entry back away where it belonged, although technically nothing had moved except electrical impulses. "Finally."

* * *

The red lights and alarms had come to a stop. It was a good thing, too, because those were messing with Ellie's head after the first minute or so. She smiled and moved her horsie.

Internally, Aita yelled, "Stupid girl, you should have moved the king instead! It's a good thing the one you're playing against is stupid as well!"

She ignored him. It was hard to ignore him, sometimes, but she did her best. "Your turn, Charlotte."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [tabletoptime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabletoptime/pseuds/TimTheToaster) for letting me use their concept of Desmond's scar origin!
> 
> If you'd like to see my fanfic writing process and hang out with me as I play games, [here's my Twitch!](https://www.twitch.tv/texassj)


End file.
